The Hunger Games Stars Leave Their Mark On Hollywood … Literally

The brutal, bleak series that has captured the hearts of a generation will come to a brutal, bleak end in November when The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 arrives in cinemas.According to Fandango, the top Halloween costumes inspired by 2015 movie releases are stormtroopers (a la John Boyega in Star Wars: The Force Awakens) and Katniss Everdeen, everyone’s favorite revolutionary archer played by Jennifer Lawrence.Ahead of the premiere of Mockingjay – Part 2, the final installment of the Hunger Games franchise (tear!), Pop TV has prepared a special treat for those who simply cannot wait any longer. The audience let out a quiet “boo” and sporadic mutterings of “Everdeen…” Kushner introduced Conan O’Brien, who stepped up to the podium and announced, “That’s right, ladies and gentlemen.

For fans of Suzanne Collins’s trilogy about a young girl, Katniss Everdeen, forced to fight for survival in a country ruled by fear and fuelled by televised gladiatorial combat, this is the moment they have been waiting for. And, in the case of the United Kingdom, will either be able to see off a certain secret agent in what could prove to be a record year for ticket sales? Here, the film’s director, Francis Lawrence, and producer, Nina Jacobson, lead us through the rebels’ charge, and the journey Katniss and her compatriots — including Gale Hawthorne and Peeta Mellark — have taken through the franchise’s three previous installments, based on the books by Suzanne Collins. “Mockingjay — Part 2″ opens on Nov. 20. “This is a building that we found outside of Paris,” Lawrence said. “If you know the books, there’s a sequence where they set off a trap with toxic oil, this black sludge that comes pouring down onto them. The jet-setting duo will give viewers an inside look back at the series as they travel to the various Hunger Games filming locations all over Atlanta, Ga. for a full fledged fan experience. Abrams rebooting the “Hunger Games” franchise in six months), gave a shout-out to the cast and creators and gave some context to the ceremony, noting the history and origins of the tradition — it all started when silent film star Norma Talmadge “unwittingly stepped in wet cement.” O’Brien also engaged in some banter. “I’ll hold for your ‘woos,’” O’Brien joked at one point when the audience cheered. “Yeah, that one was late,” he said to a late woo-er. “I hate a wait loo.” O’Brien said, executing the second flub of the morning. “I’ve been drinking.

The hype surrounding the release of both films is almost unprecedented and has seen the share prices of leading global cinema chains rise as analysts predict they are heading for bumper revenues. The films, the first of which was released in 2012, have raked in more than $2bn worldwide at the box office and made a global star of their leading lady, Jennifer Lawrence, who plays the increasingly traumatised Katniss with a perfect mix of fury and resignation.

I get started earlier on Halloween.” O’Brien proceeded to give a dramatic welcome to Los Angeles City Council member Mitch O’Farrell, who officially introduced the three stars. Advance tickets for Mockingjay, which stars Hollywood’s highest-paid female star, Jennifer Lawrence, as the teenage archer and hunter turned rebel leader Everdeen, started selling online as far back as the start of October. Given that the previous three Hunger Games films have grossed more than £1.5bn, Lionsgate, the company behind Mockingjay, has spent heavily to ensure that few people on the planet are unaware that the final instalment of the franchise comes out in the UK on 19 November.

In addition to exclusive on-set interviews with franchise stars Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth, the pair spend some time in Buckhead, Ga., at The Swan House, the mansion where President Snow resides, and where many of the party scenes in Catching Fire were filmed. (Fun fact: Lawrence tells Feltheimer and Steel the Swan House is where she learned to dance with her on-screen love Josh Hutcherson) They also stop by Sweetwater Creek State Park to check out the ruins and rivers where Mockingjay – art 2 was filmed, hang out with Patina Miller (who plays Commander Paylor) at Pullman Yard, which was transformed into District 8, and dine with none other than NeNe Leakes at Lure Restaurant, the Atlanta hotspot that Lawrence, co-star Elizabeth Banks, and many of The Real Housewives of Atlanta love to eat. The generation who came to Katniss as young teens and have grown up ploughing through the books and queuing for the movies respond to her story in a particularly personal way. A poll conducted by Piedmont Media Research found that Mockingjay shades Disney’s The Force Awakens as the most eagerly awaited film among cinema-goers since the company started its polling five years ago.

They see danger piped down their smartphones and beheadings on their Facebook page,” she says. “My data showed very clearly how anxious they are about everything from getting into debt or not getting a job, to wider issues such as climate change and war – 79% of those who took part in my survey worried about getting a job, 72% worried about debt, and you have to remember these are teenagers. “In previous generations teenagers did not think in this way. Unlike the first-era millennials [who Hertz classes as those aged between 20 and 30] who grew up believing that the world was their oyster and ‘Yes we can’, this new generation knows the world is an unequal and harsh place.” Writer and activist Laurie Penny, herself a first-era millennial at the age of 29, agrees. “I think what today’s young people have grasped that my generation didn’t get until our early 20s, is that adults don’t know everything,” she says. “They might be trying their best but they don’t always have your best interests at heart. Many chains are screening a midnight viewing on 17 December, so that fans can see the film as soon it is released. “We’re seeing sellouts across the board – from Hollywood to London, to Sparks, Nevada, and everywhere in between,” Greg Foster, CEO of Imax Entertainment, said recently. But how well does a bow and arrow work when her team is forced into the sewers beneath the opulent city? “Katniss is pretty effective with it,” Lawrence said. “And Gale with his crossbow, he’s actually pretty effective [as well].

In contrast to JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, there are no reliable adult figures to dispense helpful advice and no one in authority she can truly trust (notably even the most likeable adult figures in the books tend to be flawed at best and fraudulent at worst). It’s kind of fun because Gale’s got their incendiary arrows which they’re using to light up the tunnels.” But the fun doesn’t last long, “As they make their way through the Capitol, some of them make it, and some of them don’t,” Jacobson said. “This moment with [Katniss] and Peeta [Josh Hutcherson] is a big turning point, this is her trying to bring him back to her. Even her friends may not always have her back, hard as they try – Dumbledore’s Army would probably find themselves taken out before they’d uttered a single counter-curse in the battlegrounds of Panem. So this is actually a very fast, urgent moment that’s not totally tender, although there’s some tenderness to it.” No doubt this final stand will cost many Panem citizens their lives, but judgment day has arrived, all the way to the front steps of the dictator’s door. “That is Snow’s mansion,” Jacobson hinted. “There’s still quite a bit of reckoning to be done.” It’s clear that today’s teenagers feel a great deal of anxiety, that they’re under a lot of pressure, both internal and external, and that depression rates are rising among teens.

It really depends on the reviews and word of mouth as to how it will be.” David Hancock, the director of cinema at IHS Technology, said that it was rare to see three massive franchise films coming out at the same time. They’ve been priced out of the housing market, unemployment is almost a given and they’ve been saddled with economic debt which they did nothing to accumulate,” she says. “The anger they have about this, coupled with their genuine concern about social, political, and ecological crises, has created an atmosphere of fear and anxiety. He suggested you would have to go back to 2002, when Die Another Day was competing against the Harry Potter franchise and The Lord of the Rings, to make a similar comparison. “Franchise films are all about getting an audience hooked,” Hancock said. “Once you are committed to the first one, you are committed for the long haul. Sequels in the 90s meant just sticking out another film with a 2 on the end – it wasn’t bringing you into the whole idea of it. “Each time, sequels went down around 10% in box-office terms, so they dropped the budget 10% each time and so each film got worse and you ended up with Police Academy 7. Since then we’ve seen economic collapse in Greece, the Arab spring, civil war in Syria, the rise of Isis and the deaths of black men and women at the hands of the police in the US leading to the formation of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Film admissions dipped to 157.5 million in 2014, compared with a high of 175 million in 2002, due to the World Cup effect and a dearth of big-budget films. The other huge influence on early millennials – JK Rowling’s books, and the subsequent films – taught a generation to believe in magic and the power of friendship.